{"id":30475,"date":"2019-08-24T22:57:03","date_gmt":"2019-08-24T19:57:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tentaclii.wordpress.com\/?p=30475"},"modified":"2019-08-24T22:57:03","modified_gmt":"2019-08-24T19:57:03","slug":"new-ray-bradbury-sculpture-statue-unveiled-in-his-home-town","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/2019\/08\/24\/new-ray-bradbury-sculpture-statue-unveiled-in-his-home-town\/","title":{"rendered":"New Ray Bradbury sculpture\/statue unveiled in his home town"},"content":{"rendered":"

The new Ray Bradbury sculpture\/statue<\/a> is now in place and dedicated in his home town of Waukegan, Illinois, a lakeside town about 30 miles north of Chicago. Designed by Zachary Oxman and made by E & E Metal Fab. near Harrisburg, the ‘Fantastical Traveler’ memorial was unveiled for Bradbury\u2019s 100th birthday in August 2019. It’s only had local media coverage, so far.<\/p>\n

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Locally funded by $125,000 in donations, the memorial heralds a planned 3,500-sq.ft. Ray Bradbury Museum in the town’s disused Carnegie Library. In the meantime the town hosts an annual Ray Bradbury ‘Dandelion Wine’ Fine Arts Festival. <\/p>\n

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The work was inspired by Ray Bradbury’s 1971 celebratory poem for NASA’s Mariner 9 mission…<\/p>\n

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If only we had taller been<\/p>\n

The fence we walked between the years<\/p>\n

Did balance us serene<\/p>\n

It was a place half in the sky where<\/p>\n

In the green of leaf and promising of peach<\/p>\n

We\u2019d reach our hands to touch and almost touch the sky<\/p>\n

If we could reach and touch, we said,<\/p>\n

\u2018Twould teach us, not to, never to, be dead<\/p>\n

We ached and almost touched that stuff;<\/p>\n

Our reach was never quite enough.<\/p>\n

If only we had taller been<\/p>\n

And touched God\u2019s cuff, His hem,<\/p>\n

We would not have to go with them<\/p>\n

Who\u2019ve gone before,<\/p>\n

Who, short as us, stood tall as they could stand<\/p>\n

And hoped by stretching tall that they might keep their land<\/p>\n

Their home, their hearth, their flesh and soul.<\/p>\n

But they, like us, were standing in a hole<\/p>\n

O, Thomas, will a Race one day stand really tall<\/p>\n

Across the Void, across the Universe and all?<\/p>\n

And, measured out with rocket fire,<\/p>\n

At last put Adam\u2019s finger forth<\/p>\n

As on the Sistine Ceiling,<\/p>\n

And God\u2019s hand come down the other way<\/p>\n

To measure man and find him Good<\/p>\n

And Gift him with Forever\u2019s Day?<\/p>\n

I work for that<\/p>\n

Short man, Large dream<\/p>\n

I send my rockets forth between my ears<\/p>\n

Hoping an inch of Good is worth a pound of years<\/p>\n

Aching to hear a voice cry back along the universal mall:<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve reached Alpha Centauri!<\/p>\n

We\u2019re tall, O God, we\u2019re tall!<\/p>\n

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The new Ray Bradbury sculpture\/statue is now in place and dedicated in his home town of Waukegan, Illinois, a lakeside …<\/p>\n

Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-odd-scratchings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30475\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}